Comcast to offer cable package aimed at family viewing

STACEY HIRSHThe Baltimore Sun

Published Saturday, December 24, 2005

Comcast Corp. announced plans Thursday to roll out a 16-channel programming package early next year aimed at family viewing, part of the cable industry's efforts to combat criticism that too much of the programming it sells is not suitable for families.

The "family tier" package includes channels such as National Geographic, HGTV, the Weather Channel, the Disney Channel, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN and Discovery Kids.

The move comes as cable companies have faced government and consumer pressure to exclude violence, sex and other topics from certain cable packages and to promote more family friendly programming. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin last month also called on the industry to give consumers the chance to buy channels a la carte, paying only for the ones they want to watch.

Time Warner Cable announced last week that it would launch a family package early next year as well.

Comcast's family package will cost an average of $31.20 a month. That price includes an average of $12 for basic cable, $4.25 for a digital cable box and $14.95 for the 16 family tier channels.

Comcast already offers a sports tier package for $4.95 a month -- with channels like NBA TV and the Tennis Channel -- and a Hispanic tier package that costs $9.95 a month and includes stations such as MTV Espanol and Telemundo.

Consumers will still be able to get all 16 channels in the family package through existing packages, the company said.

"As we've seen with some of our Hispanic tiers and some of our Sports tiers, these are categories that consumers have a great deal of interest in," said Jim Gordon, a Comcast spokesman.

The family package meets a demand for indecency restrictions on television, said Andrew M. Schroepfer, president of Tier 1 Research, a Minneapolis research and consulting firm. It is also a move the company must make to compete in an ever-changing telecommunications market that eventually will offer consumers the chance to watch television over the Internet and buy channels a la carte, he said.

But it is difficult to find a package of television stations that everyone agrees on, Schroepfer said. Some parents, for instance, may feel reality television shows on the networks are not family programming, he said, yet the networks are included in the basic cable package that is needed to buy the family tier.

"At the end of the day, every person is going to have a different opinion about what should be in there," Schroepfer said.